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Winter Olympics organisers investigate reports of damaged medals / Photo: © AFP
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Winter Olympics organisers investigate reports of damaged medals
The organisers of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Olympics said on Monday they were investigating why medals are breaking after competitors, including gold medallist skier Breezy Johnson, said they were falling apart.
"We are aware of the situation. We have seen the images. Obviously, we are trying to understand in detail if there is a problem," Andrea Francisi, Milan-Cortina 2026 chief games operating officer, said during a press briefing.
Johnson, the American who won gold in the women's downhill alpine skiing on Sunday, was among the first to encounter the problem when she showed her broken medal at the post-event media conference.
"So there's the medal. And there's the ribbon," she told reporters. "And here's the little piece that is supposed to go into the ribbon to hold the medal, and yeah, it came apart."
The 30-year-old had a word of warning for her fellow competitors.
"Don't jump in them," she said. "I was jumping in excitement, and it broke... It's not crazy broken, but a little broken."
It was a similar story for Alysa Liu after she won a gold as part of the USA figure skating team event on Sunday.
"My medal don't need the ribbon," she wrote in a video posted on Instagram, accompanied by a photo of her holding the medal in one hand and the separated ribbon in the other.
German biathlete Justus Strelow, who won bronze in the mixed relay on Sunday, happened to catch the moment his medal came out the worse for wear after celebrating with his teammates.
In a clip posted on Instagram, the German relay team are jumping up and down in celebration when suddenly Strelow's bronze medal comes loose and a metallic clang echoes through the room.
"Hey Olympics, what's up with those medals?" the biathlete asks in the video.
The Games' organisers said they are "paying maximum attention to this matter" so that "everything is absolutely perfect" for the athletes receiving medals.
It is not the first time Olympians have experienced such an issue.
Some 220 medals at the 2024 Games in Paris, which contained a small piece of scrap metal from the Eiffel Tower, had to be replaced because they quickly turned black or rusted.
The 1,146 medals for the 2026 Winter Games were manufactured by the Istituto Poligrafico e Zecca dello Stato, Italy's national mint.
K.Hernandez--SFF
